17+ Beautiful Backyard Pond Ideas For All Budgets

Want your garden to spring to life? Add a pond or water feature. Unless there’s some other water source right nearby, providing fresh water (in addition to nectar plants) is key to encouraging the essential pollinators (birds, bees, butterflies) and their friends (frogs, and other small wildlife) to make your garden their favourite hangout. That’s my kind of party.

Choose a Pond that Fits Your Space and Style

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The first step is get inspired. There are so many choices to consider:

Above ground, inground, or partly inground

Type of materials to contain, surround, and line the pond

Formal, casual, or naturalized

Waterfalls, bubblers

Fish, plants (the other wild things will find it on their own)

I’ve collected ideas, ranging in size from small containers to very large ponds that cover all budgets and styles. I took these snapshots on garden tours and in my own garden, so don’t expect prize winning images, but I think you’ll find lots of ideas for your pond project.

Once you know the style you’re after, you can start the real work of planning and building. And attracting frogs.

It’s probably obvious but, the larger the pond, the more likely you are to need professional help with the planning and installation, the greater the cost, and amount of ongoing maintenance work. This said, some of the smaller ponds can be costly too, depending on the choice of materials and whether you buy them new or used.

Some of the product links below go to my affiliate’s account at Amazon.com. I encourage you to try and buy used first, or seek out local end of season sales for the best deals.

1. Container pond with stained-glass water lily

2. Formal raised pond with paving stones

I think the secret to how great this pond looks is a) the use of pavers, and 2) having it against the brick wall.

3. Small whiskey barrel water feature

These whiskey barrel ponds with liners can be purchased as kits. You can see one here at Amazon.com: whiskey barrel pond kit. If you can wait until the end of the season, you might be able to find one for a great deal.

4. Old well converted into small garden pond

5. 2-tier wood-framed raised pond with water feature

This one would take some planning to work out the flow of the water from the top tier to the lower tier. Fun idea to add the gargoyle fountain and statues if you dig that kind of thing. See various gargoyle statues at Amazon.com.

6. Hot tub converted into backyard pond

This pond was created by a friend of Empress of Dirt on Facebook. Her husband built the wood frame around their old hot tub to create this little pond.

8. Pond form in wooden raised bed

This one is from the garden at my previous home. We loved having the pond near the house where we could enjoy it.

I took a pond form and built the raised bed to fit. Conveniently, it worked for a 4×8′ structure.

9. Pond form inground garden pond

This was the very first pond I installed in the back garden at my previous home. This was the pond that told the wild things, hey, there’s a great garden here and fresh water! Come enjoy it! And they did. And yes, I concealed the pond form with flat rocks. You can buy pond forms like this one at any home and garden store.

10. Small inground backyard pond with pond liner

This is the pond at my home today. I found a pond liner kit with a pump for 70% off and, because the soil is so sandy (easy to dig), I had it installed within 2 hours. Here’s a 8 X 11 Mini Pond Kit. The branches draped across the pond keep the birds of prey from eating my beloved fish.

11. Pond liner style inground backyard pond with waterfall

12. Midsize inground pond with lilies and small waterfall

13. Midsize oval pond with flat stone surround

It takes some planning to have an inground pond like this more formal one that conceals the edges of the pond liner. This deep, flat stone hides it nicely.

14. Container pond with water wall

I saw this water wall on a garden tour. If you have a sheltered area without much wind, it’s a neat idea (wind would blow too much water away). You can see how it’s made here.

15. Midsize inground garden pond with bridge

16. Midsize inground pond with tall grasses

17. Midsize inground pond with tall waterfall

18. Large double backyard pond

19. Large water lily garden pond

20. Large backyard garden pond with tall waterfall

Waterfalls can look pretty silly (unnatural and out of place) unless you have a natural hill to work with beside your pond area like this one.

21. Large naturalized backyard garden pond with garden art

This was actually the first homemade garden pond I ever saw. It was gorgeous. I went home determined to create my first pond. And I did.

22. The number one fan of backyard ponds

It is a badge of honor when the wild things settle in. If they don’t, your pond is too clean! Frogs are honoured guests in my pond.

I hope you found some ideas you can use in your garden. If you’d like tips on how to set up a small backyard pond, see my how-tos here.

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About Melissa J. Will

Melissa J. Will is a home and garden blogger (writer, photographer, artist) from Ontario, Canada. Favourite obsessions include repurposed DIY projects and tutorials, organic gardening, creative garden ideas, debt-free living, nature (what more is there?), and sustainable living—all with a dash of humour and side order of freshly-grown salad greens.

I have always wanted a small pond in our backyard. We have a swimming pool and a really large backyard so there is plenty of room. So here is a question for you: if we don’t run the pool pump all the time and keep the chemical level up on the pool we get water moccasins in the pool so how do you keep the bad critters out of the pond? I don’t need my dog or grandkids getting bit by something like this.

Cindy Meisenheimer, we live at the bottom of a large rock bluff in Tennessee, and the name for this big bluff is “cotton-mouth hill”…… We have 13 acres in the middle of this snake infested area. Lately (last 2 yrs) we have seen a lot of King Snakes which are famous for killing the poisonous snakes…….and, we’ve noticed the cotton-mouth population has been waning quite a bit. King Snakes can be bought online. I don’t know how you could contain them “if” you do buy a couple……is there a fence around your pool? King Snakes are great “good guys” and there is absolutely nothing to fear from them. I’ve been sitting beside a flower bed and a King Snake slitters pass me so close I could reach out and touch him.

This is the only suggestion I have, and as Melissa J. Will says, “good luck”. lol

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